A brilliant way to protect outdoor art

METAL sculptures that have lost their lustre after years in the open air can now be given a bright new sheen, thanks to a technique for spraying metals developed by weapons researchers in New Mexico. The process was originally designed to prevent corrosion in the containers that store nuclear weapons.

Ideally, for a surface that is shiny and resists corrosion, says Kendall Hollis, a metallurgist who works at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, "you want something that is pore and defect-free".

However, corrosion-resistant metals, such as stainless steel, are hard for sculptors to cast or machine, and techniques such as electroplating lay down a coating that is too thin for much mechanical polishing or shaping.

The Los Alamos technique sprays the sculpture's surface with tiny droplets of molten metal. The metal is melted by an electric arc and then blown at the object with high-pressure gas. "It's analogous to paint ...

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